I was really surprised that Apple didn’t do anything “magical” or “revolutionary” with the iPad’s [Portal page] on-screen-keyboard. The iPhone’s was definitely revolutionary because it was probably the first truly viable OSK – thanks to some intelligent software design and a capacitive screen instead of a resistive one. The iPad’s keyboard has that same inteiilgent software design, and a nice big capacitive screen. The problem is the big part. The iPad’s keyboard works well, but it really only works well if you can set it down on a desk in front of you so that you can touch type on it. If you are walking around with it in your hands, it works quite poorly for thumb typing. This fact alone makes the iPad annoying to use for typing if you don’t have something to set it down on.

Even since I got the iPad in my hands, I’ve been wishing for a Dial Keys-style keyboard implementation. Dial Keys, if you’ll recall, is a piece of Windows based software that was designed for touchscreen UMPCs. Dial Keys places a split radial keyboard at the corners of the device, which puts keys right in the range of one’s thumbs. If Apple allowed developers to modify the keyboard on the device, I’m sure we would have already seen something similar.

I made some mockup graphics to put on the iPad just to see what Dial Keys on the iPad would look like:

The fine folks over at MicroPCTalk are racking up an ever impressive list of mods for the Sony Vaio UX series.

This time around, user audioz33 has decided to trick out his UX490 with some sweet street-glow LED backlighting. All UX-series UMPCs come with a blue backlit keyboard, but it seems that audioz33 wanted his UX490 to stand out from the pack. And through a rather sweet looking modification to the keyboard’s LEDs, it definitely does:

Audioz33 appears to have hand-soldered 26 green LEDs in place of the original blue ones. He says that the project took him around 2 hours to complete. Not bad for those of you who like to start a project and finish it the same day. Though the modder mentions that you may not wish to attempt this mod without a decent amount of soldering experience.

If I had this done to my UX, I think I’d probably go with orange LEDs to pay homage to the Sony Clie UX-series which had an awesome thumb-board with orange backlit keys.

It’s only been two days since we got our hands on the iPad, but I wanted to get this out there early as there are a lot of questions. I’ve made a video to try to give you a sense of what it really looks like to type on the iPad in real conditions. I’ve also put together a chart using a simple web based typing speed test which I ran on the iPad and on my computer for comparison:

Don’t read too deeply into the Mistakes row, as some of the mistakes shouldn’t really have been counted due to the fact that the iPad does auto-correct some words (something that didn’t sit well with the typing test I used). What is significant is the WPM. While this test wasn’t scientific, I would say that the results do a good job of representing the experience in each given mode, but I was surprised to find that I typed at the same WPM in portrait and landscape touch typing. Landscape touch typing felt much more comfortable because the keys are larger than the portrait keyboard. For the touch typing sections, I sat the iPad flat on a table in front of me and I typed with all fingers, just like you’d do on a real keyboard. For the thumb tests, I held the iPad in my hands while typing with my thumbs.

I’m pretty impressed with the speed that could be achieved with the touch typing in both portrait and landscape modes. 57 WPM (and better than average accuracy due to good auto-correction and other factors) is pretty darn good speed for an on screen keyboard (OSK). The issue here is that top speed can only be achieved while you are sitting down and can sit the iPad in front of you. You won’t be walking around with the iPad churning out 57 WPM while on the go.

The iPad’s OSK is probably the best OSK yet implemented on a slate device of this size. I’m sure that there are some Tablet PC gurus pulling their hair out right now, but I definitely have never seen an OSK that is this effective on any other device of this size. This is due to a combination of good hardware (accurate and responsive capacitive touchscreen) and intelligent software (auto-corrections and invisible landing area increases based on the word that you are likely to type). It may be the best, but the experience really doesn’t feel quite right. It is especially uncomfortable when typing with one’s thumbs, but unfortunately this is probably the best way to have meaningful typing ability while being mobile with the iPad. The other alternative is to hold the iPad in one hand and type with the other, which works fine for short URL entries, but wouldn’t be my method of choice for writing out a few sentences. After typing a short paragraph for the typing test, with my thumbs in landscape mode, my wrists quickly started to become sore. I couldn’t see that being a viable method of input for more than a few sentences. I mentioned that the keyboard would be an issue in my article from February — The Big Flaw with Big Slates (Yes, Even the iPad), and I’m finding it to be the biggest challenge to the usability of the iPad so far.

What sort of solutions could Apple have considered rather than simply a big OSK? Well perhaps Apple could have looked into something like Swype which inputs words by recognizing particular shapes that one creates while dragging a finger around to letters on a keyboard. A multitouch capacitive screen such as the one on the iPad is also ripe for a Dial Keys split-keyboard implementation. I hope they at least tossed the idea around during the creation of the iPad, and I also hope that they are still considering it. I’m really dying for Dial Keys on the iPad right now!

Edit: Prompted by turn.self.off from the comments, I just did a quick test to see how many keys the keyboard would allow to be pressed at once and the answer is 11 — one more than the natural number of digits on one’s hands… unless, of course, you are Antonio Alfonseca.

Thanks to the great crowd at DevMob2010 in London last week, I’ve had some good feedback to my scenarios and segmentation diagram which was originally created in 2006 and is now updated and re-published under CC license. It should help as a stimulus for software developers thinking about the possibilities in the space between smartphones and netbooks and can help device designers to think about usage scenarios. Customers will also find it useful to pick out their own usage scenarios and to see what type of device fits with their requirements.

FEEDBACK IS ENCOURAGED. If you have thoughts, please add them to the comments section below.

During my session at DevMob I had a set of suggestions which I’ve added to the diagram. It was interesting to hear suggestions for the 8-10 segment which included Multi-touch/User gaming (many players, one device) and multi-person video viewing. Those are two models that the iPad is targeting very closely. We also added ‘Media Overview / Chooser’ to the 8-10 segment based on the need for screen space for an overview of images, album cover art or video’s.

Many thanks to all that took part in the sessions at DevMob and thanks to all of you that took the time to present and talk about your ideas in this space. I hope to see you all again at the next DevMob2010 and at other events in Europe.

The diagram (V2.0) is available here (PDF)

Notes are shared in a Google Document here.

Update: I’m experimenting with a slightly different layout based on feedback below.  The segments have been re-drawn to represent a more fluid crossover point.

V2.1 diagrams are here.

PDF: https://www.umpcportal.com/downloads/devicesegments-V21.pdf
JPG: https://www.umpcportal.com/downloads/devicesegments-V21.jpg

Click for full size jpg image.

Thanks to Intel for sponsoring my trip to London for DevMob and to the Soft Talk Blog team [twitter] for their assistance.

Mobile Scenarios and Segmentation by Carrypad is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.

More than the actual product itself, I was excited for Apple’s iPad unveiling because I was waiting for them to show the world their innovative solution to input on a large keyboard-less device. I was very surprised to find that they didn’t offer anything innovative. Instead, the iPad uses a simple iPhone style keyboard (albeit a larger one). The inability to efficiently input text on these large slates is going to be responsible for their extinction.

The companies making these big slates, in an attempt to justify the slow keyboard input, would like us to think that slates are all about content consumption. And surely they are; larger slates will be great for feeling like the web is in your hands. But there is a certain degree of input that will always be necessary to access the content that we’d like to consume (until computers can read our minds, that is…) and people will always want to be able to effectively write short messages when they are connected to the web. My iPhone is all about consumption of web content as well, and I type on it all the time. From tasks, to tweets, good input is a necessity.

Apple changed the landscape of mobile devices by realizing that a well designed on-screen-keyboard (OSK) could have serious benefits, such as being able to remove the keyboard when it wasn’t being used, and being able to dedicate the entire screen to the content.

A good OSK works great with a device that is small enough for one’s thumbs to reach nearly all the way across the screen. The nature of a thumb-board means that only two digits are in the way of the screen, offering great visibility, which is very important for an OSK because of the obvious lack of tactile information. Even the way that the device is held makes the OSK thumb-board concept work well — thumbs come in from the side and are naturally lifted away from the screen allowing the user to see the next key that will be pressed.

As the size of slates increases, people start doing that awkward thumb stretch to try to reach a key that is out of range. In order to do the thumb stretch maneuver, one must change up the grip on their device just to hit one key, then switch it back when they are finished. This slows down the rate of input and starts to break down the overall experience of using the device.

The real issue is when slates get so big that thumb typing isn’t even viable. How can one use something like the iPad while walking? The only way seems to be holding the device with one hand and poking at the keyboard with the index finger with the other. Even if the iPad is sitting in one’s lap, trying to touch-type on an OSK will be a pain. Why? For a few reasons; the first of which is visibility. While the grip on a small mobile device means that thumbs can move quickly and effectively away from the screen, attempting to lay your hands on a large slate with an OSK will sufficiently block the keyboard from view.

What’s more, there are no palm rests on these devices. The experience is not going to be comparable to typing on a physical keyboard. Many of these slates shooting for the edge-to-edge screen look, leaving no room for one to rest their hands if the objective is to touch-type with the OSK. What is someone to do, float their hands above the screen and touch it only with their fingers when they type? If the only alternative is typing with a single finger, users will be begging for something better.

Apple may have anticipated some of this typing frustration by also announcing two accessories which both aim to assist the user in typing. One was a dock that has a keyboard, and the other is a case which props the device up on an angle which is supposed to make the device easier to type on. While these might reduce the annoyance of poor input, accessories and add-ons are not a final solution to the problem. These two accessories, unveiled in the same announcement as the iPad, show that Apple realizes that typing on the iPad is a weakness. Eventually, users may be asking “Why do I have to dock my device to use a decent keyboard? Why isn’t there a better way? inch

A well designed OSK is a major blessing for a small device with a screen size that makes it thumb-typeable, but once you get out of the screen-size range that enables thumb-typing, input will become painfully slow. The door is left open for someone to come up with a good alternative solution to giant OSKs. I’d like to say that written input would be a good one, but that’s already been done quite well on the tablet PC platform, but somehow hasn’t managed to catch on.

The upcoming Viliv S7 [Portal page] is currently at the #6 spot on ultra mobile PC Portal’s top 10 chart and is still on its way out the door to a consumer release. If the recently released and oft-glorified Viliv S5 [Portal page] and Viliv X70 [Portal page] are any indicator, the Viliv S7 is going to be a solid ultra mobile PC with good build quality. Setting it apart from the S5 or X70 is the fact that the S7 has a hardware keyboard while the aforementioned Viliv devices use an on screen keyboard with vibrating feedback for their default text entry method. While many claim to be waiting for their dream device which would be “an S5 with a hardware keyboard, inch the S7’s keyboard is actually going to be the device’s biggest challenge.

What do I mean when I say challenge? Well for one, it is going to need to impress its users if the Viliv S7 is going to build a reputation as being a great device as the S5 and X70 seem to have done.

If you’ll come back with me to a time that seems not so distant, most of the original netbooks were released with 7 inch screens, and keyboards with diagonals not much larger or smaller than that size. Shortly after the first round of netbook contenders, screens increased in size from 7 inch to 8.9 inch almost unanimously across companies and eventually up to 10 inch which is around the area where the average user doesn’t feel they are compromising too much on screen size. Screen size is only one part of the story, however, along with the increase in screen size, keyboards were able to grow as well; up to a point where consumers felt that they could type nearly as well as on a full sized laptop.

Now here comes Viliv with the S7 which has a 7 inch screen during a time when netbooks are nearly always released as 8.9 inch or 10 inch devices. Now I know many of you realize that the S7 is definitely not a netbook, it is a UMPC, however, if there is a keyboard on the device, people are going to be dissatisfied based on how similar the typing experience on the S7 is compared to a full sized keyboard. This is a potential issue for the popularity of the device and especially for its word-of-mouth based marketing which is very important for a niche product such as a UMPC. If people come away dissatisfied with the keyboard, the likely result will be that this is the largest complaint about the S7 and instead of hearing people say (as they do now about the S5) “The Viliv S5 is great, it would be even better with a keyboard! inch, you’ll hear “The S7 could have been a good device if only it had a good keyboard. inch But unfortunately size isn’t the only potential challenge for the S7’s keyboard.

It’s the polar opposite of what you usually see on the portal. A mobile PC built around a huge keyboard with a tiny screen tacked on to the side. Obviously this is not quite your mobile productivity box (unless you want a kneck injury) but it’s an interesting option for the home. The video below was shot a few weeks ago at CeBIT in Hannover. After reviewing it, i’m quite sure that the RF ports you see will be for wireless HDMI antennas.

The big question now is what to call this category of devices. Sofasurfer?

My biggest complaint about many of the netbooks on the market over the last year is that some of them can’t seem to get the keyboard right. Even when the size of the keyboard is reasonable, there can be some problems with key placement, the biggest offender being the incredibly annoying small shift key on the Eee line of Asus netbooks. For someone who really types on a keyboard, and doesn’t hunt and peck, the tiny shift key, which is often on the wrong side of the arrow keys, is a major annoyance. Missing the shift key is one thing, but accidentally hitting the up arrow key causes a whole slew of issues that really get in the way of serious typing.

A few sites got news that Asus would be switching up its keyboard arrangement, and now we can see concrete evidence of this from some of the models being shown at CES 09′. Several new Eee models are featuring the updated keyboard which moves the shift key to the left of the up arrow and increases its size. Some of the new models include the new Eee T101H 10″ ‘tablet netbook’.

[Liliputing]